Review – Syfy’s Being Human: Season 1 Episode 10 “Dog Eat Dog”

Erin Willard reviews Being Human airing on SyFy. SyFy takes on the hit UK show about a ghost, a vampire and a werewolf living together as they attempt to keep hold of their humanity in this re-imagining.

The seeming normalcy before the abduction.
Photo courtesy of NBCUniversal

What did you think of this episode? There was no easy way to follow a death-of-children episode without it seeming less dramatic. I enjoyed a fair percentage of the episode, but some of it drove me absolutely crazy.

Sally – I know that I wrote that I wanted some sort of quick resolution to the Sally and Nick problem, but I didn’t mean “toss Nick off with a one-sentence non-appearance dismissal”! Sheesh! I liked Nick, and I liked him better than Sally in their scenes together. She was being immature. If Nick’s line from last week that “death doesn’t leave much room for change” means that Sally’s going to stay a fairly immature 23, I’m not looking forward to following her character. But hmmm… Aidan has certainly changed, at least “recently” in his long life, but then again he is “undead,” not “dead,” so… I dunno. Please make Sally strong and allow her to mature.

Josh – Warning, this paragraph contains UK series spoilers if you haven’t watched the whole UK series including last week’s episode: It was a weird twist of scheduling that the first werewolf fight in the US version happened the same week that the second ever werewolf fight in the UK version was broadcast here. If you watch both versions then that sentence made sense. And if, like me, you watch and enjoy both versions, I hope you are also enjoying the similarities and differences in story lines between the two, as I am. This is a great case in point. Yes there was capture of the werewolf by vampires for the purpose of “dog fighting,” the vampire sport of watching (and betting on the outcome of) two werewolves fighting each other. So interesting that George never killed another werewolf, and that the only killing we’ve seen him do is the execution of Herrick. And don’t even get me started on THAT story line.

UK spoilers over Because I am NOT happy about the way they handled Josh killing The Professor and I want everyone to know it. This fight is built up throughout nearly the entire episode, then we think it’s going to be called off, then we’re horrified that it wasn’t, then we see a flash of a fight and a whimper and WHOMP there’s a commercial break. What do we see when we return? A nicely dressed and nearly entirely calm Josh muttering that he doesn’t know how he can live with himself. THAT’S IT. Sorry, it looked and sounded like he was already over it, and busy pouring over the poor man’s notebook. Worst. Payoff. Ever. NO I didn’t need to see any more of the fight, but hello, how about seeing Josh wake up in horror that he’s covered in blood? How about a little angst? How about a panicked Josh asking where that nice Professor man was? How about a “NO NO NO!” from him? WHERE IS JOSH’S HUMANITY? After his ONE LINE about the killing, he asks why the vampires didn’t make him stay in the basement. COME ON!

And speaking of that – THAT is why Aidan is going back to the family? Bishop didn’t hold up his end of the bargain, because the fight went forward. “Oops,” snickers horrible Marcus. Bishop has already told the Dutch that it wouldn’t be fair to to all the people betting to continue the fight because the older werewolf is ill. So… Somewhere, sometime after that Aidan must have confronted Bishop and Bishop said “Hang on, how about you still come back and we won’t hold your friend in the basement?” Was there such a scene and is it on the cutting room floor? Couldn’t we have cut out some of Sally’s whining about her ineffectiveness and yelling at Aidan appearing to do nothing – what would you suggest, Sally? – in favor of putting in a scene like that, maybe combined with the post-return-to-human OMG-what-did-I-do Josh angst scene? In short, this episode feels like they cut at least five minutes out and we’re left having to rewind the last act once or twice to decipher what must have happened during the commercial break. Whose fault is this? Writers, showrunners, advertisers, who? I want names!!!

Okay, I’ve taken a breath and can now return to more level-headed discussion of the rest of Aidan’s storyline this week. Flashbacks! As a LOSTie, I am very familiar with, and love, flashbacks and am always interested to see how different shows choose to use them. The color wash given to the 1955 scenes was a nice visual clue to these very relevant scenes. I particularly enjoyed the reveal near the end of the episode that Aidan of 25 years ago was completely invested in the vampire life BECAUSE of promises made to him by Bishop 200 years before, when he was a brand-new vamp. Aidan, even when fully engrossed in the vamp life, still thought of the family that he left behind when he joined the creepily named “family” run by – well who knows by whom it was run back in the late 1700s. Was it Carlo, or had there been someone before him who was considered the Boston Boss back when Boston was a city in the Colonies? And the whole Dutch thing, how creepy was that? ONE THOUSAND TEN YEARS OLD. Nice that the youngster Aidan has a proper respect for (meaning “fear of”) his elders.

One more UK spoiler if you haven’t seen last week’s episode: WOW how different is Bishop from Carrick? Can you imagine Carrick EVER acting like that around a human, in this century or any other? Especially once we saw that Carrick was still as creepy as ever?

UK spoilers over. This felt like a setup episode to me, not only because Bishop’s undead life may be on the line and because we’ll be seeing more of the Dutch next week (I am admittedly somewhat disappointed that next week’s title “Going Dutch” has nothing to do with the LOST series finale) but also because of Sally’s stated need to have actual impact, and the complete lack of Nora in this episode. Still, getting more information on the workings of the vamp world, some nifty flashbacks and personality turns for Bishop and Aidan, and Josh’s first non-animal kill – oh wait a minute… well you know what I mean – made this a serviceable episode which, for a variety of reasons, left me wanting more.